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24, THE MALL, DELHI CANTT…NOW, and in 1953-55 Gatecrash! The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… As we were driving past 24, The Mall in Delhi Cantt, I had an irrepressible urge to enter the house, uninvited and unannounced. It was a bright Sunday morning, and occupants of the house were entitled to …

An Introduction to ‘Peace-time Soldiering’ The Second World War (1939 – 45) went on for so long, that when, at long last it ended, the soldiers had forgotten their peace-time routine. And then one day, a commander called all his officers and said, “Well, gentlemen, now that the war has ended, let us get down to some serious soldiering!” He …

Prologue My one regret is that I cannot read the Persian script in which Urdu is traditionally written. I had learnt the alphabet, but before I could get a grip on ‘right-to-left’ language, the Punjab was partitioned, and Urdu became a language of our arch enemy. We were told not to use Urdu words in Hindi which was to become our official …

Editor’s Note Mahavir was born on 18 Sep 1955, and was amongst the youngest students, when he joined IIT Kharagpur in 1971. As he entered the portals of this great institute of technology, the cult of the awesome campus entered into his psyche, and became an integral part of his personality. He is also a prolific writer, and has sent a couple of pieces to us. It gives …

by Lt Gen YN Sharma It was a special day at the engineer’s residence, in the premises of the power house. A son—the first-born of the first-wife of the power parivar—had been born. Few newborns can hope for a better beginning; a celebrity father (publicly anointed as the Sun of Muzaffarabad), two doting Mothers (real-sisters) and a silver katora, in …

30th April 1997 Seventeen years ago, on the last day of April, our mother, whom we called ‘Jhaiji’ passed away. She died the way she had lived; at complete peace with herself, and without becoming a burden or inconvenience for any one, even for a single moment. She was diagnosed of cancer a few weeks before her demise, and she was with us …

April 1971 After completing the Advance Course on Radars, I was posted to West Bengal to command a Workshop Company. I had just earned my ‘Nine year long service medal’ and that made me feel pretty senior. My unit was located in a place called Kanchrapara, which was 48 kilometers north of Calcutta. When I landed up, I discovered …

Preamble A great deal has been said and written about our illustrious and Saintly ancestor, Bhai Hira Singh ji (1879-1926). His accomplishments were extensively covered by the media of his times and functions are held all over the world in his memory on 2nd September every year. His biography has gone into several editions and his pictures adorn several museums, including the Golden …

Note: The word ‘engineer’ has its roots in the Latin word ingeniare, which means ‘to devise in the sense of construct, or craftsmanship’. Several other words are related to ingeniare, including ingenuity. Thus an engineer is a person who invents a smarter technique of doing a job. The word “engine”, derives from the Latin ingenium (c. 1250), meaning “innate quality, …

Many years ago, I read a poem by Ogden Nash, of which an abridged version is given below: One kind of person when catching a train, always wants to allow an hour to cover the ten-block trip to the terminus, And the other kind looks at them as if they were verminous, And the second kind says that five minutes …